Remembering Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens, author, prolific essayist, masterful
critic and fierce intellectual has passed away aged 62, after a
long battle with oesophageal cancer. Here, GQ's staff and
contributors pay tribute to the man and his work.

"After a particularly long, and quite magnificently entertaining
lunch, Hitch sent me an email of gratitude containing the following
words of advice; 'The four most overrated things in life are
champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.'" (Piers
Morgan)

"About 20 years ago I appeared on the David Frost show with
Hitchens. The subject was class. Hitchens approached me for a
chat before we went on and I had never seen a man quite so
drunk. But just before the cameras rolled he straightened his
tie, smoothed his rumpled shirt, rubbed his red eyes and
delivered the most intelligent, coherent, witty,
well-constructed sentences I had ever heard in my life. He was
an international treasure and he has gone too soon."
(Tony
Parsons)

"Curious to think that Christopher Hitchens might even now be
arguing with God. Pity the deity. He was personally extremely kind
and helpful to me especially in the years when I was starting out,
when he had no need to be. He would treat you with the same regard
he showed for people he looked up to, like Jessica Mitford. When I
mentioned this at a book launch in London, HE bought ME a drink.
Such behaviour, as you may know, is not necessarily the norm. I
found him extremely unusual as a character in that - while he
needed no reminding of his own intellectual talent - he always had
time for, and interest in, others. So many people of his ability -
it's a small category, as obituarists have been reminding us -
grow, with age, into a condition you might call 'Transmit Only'.
Hitchens was never like that. Even his enemies will miss
him." ( Robert Chalmers)

"Never has a man been more argumentative with such a keen sense
of purpose. I met him once and he spoke like a machine gun."
( Dylan Jones)

"Christopher Hitchens wrote a piece in June's edition of Vanity
Fair, in which he discussed his horror at being robbed of
his speaking voice by his cancer. In that article the following
passage appeared: 'To my writing classes I used to open by saying
that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them
up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge
and loathsome snake: 'How many people in this class, would you say,
can talk? I mean really talk?' That had its duly woeful effect." I
didn't know Hitchens. Never met him. There were many subjects -
faith, Iraq, science - on which we might have disagreed had I done
so. But he could really talk. And, by God, he could write."
(Ed
Caesar)

"Christopher Hitchens was hideously, spectacularly wrong when he wrote in Vanity Fair that women aren't funny -
but I admire the sheer brass-necked chutzpah of advancing
such a ludicrous notion. He was what every columnist aspires to be
- effortlessly, relentlessly provocative and so gifted that even
the most audacious argument was worth reading. My personal
favourite Hitchens moment came in 2000 in the middle of his
glorious character assassination of Hilary Clinton in No One
Left To Lie To: The Values Of The Worst Family (Verso). The
killer line? "She is not just a liar but a lie: a phoney construct
of shreds and patches and hysterical, self-pitying, demagogic
improvisations." (Andy
Morris)

"Although I have admired Hitchens since reading his Vanity
Fair piece on Agent Orange's legacy in Vietnam, my true
revelation came watching footage of him at debates. He could
intellectually humble in one sentence, offering a phrase
simultaneously off-the-cuff, superbly reasoned and far funnier than
anything anyone else would spend hours constructing. I remember
scouring the internet for more, trying to figure out how he did it.
His 2008 demolition of Rabbi David Wolpe particularly stands out:
'It's some plan, isn't it? Mass destruction, pitiless
extermination, annihilation going on all the time and all this set
in motion on a scale that is absolutely beyond our imagination, in
order that the Pope can tell people not to jerk off.'" (Oliver
Franklin)

"I first met Hitch more than 20 years ago when he came to my
house outside Boston to interview me about a book for Warhol's
Interview magazine. We took to each other fast but he fell
really hard for my dog, a handsome Welsh Springer with a tragic air
called Morgan. Morgan returned the attraction so that much of the
interview was conducted with Hitch holding Morgan, the two of them,
eyes not that dissimilar, staring at each other while he went
through the motions of quizzing me about the French Revolution. He
even paid Morgan the ultimate compliment by smoking gently at him,
the dog nobly turning his head slightly sideways not to give
offence. "Take care of your master," he said to Morgan before he
left. "He's alright but he needs to be more of a hound."
(Simon
Schama)

"Christopher Hitchens, master of the sarcastic understatement
and the grandiose description alike, is the reason I became a
journalist. When I have written myself into a cul-de-sac or when a
sentence of mine seems awkward, I try to engage the mantra of 'What
would Hitchens do?', even if that, occasionally, is to have a sip
of wine and a cigarette. In a 2010 interview with American
broadcaster Charlie Rose, after Hitchens' cancer diagnosis, the
writer explained the paradox between a life well-lived and the
flirtation with inevitable mortality. 'I have felt that life is a
wager,' he said, 'and I probably was getting more out of leading a
bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.
Writing is what is important to me and anything that helps me do
that, or enhances and prolongs and deepens and intensifies argument
and conversation, is worth it to me. I was knowingly taking a
risk.' 'But you would do it again?' Rose asked. 'Yes, I think I
would', was the reply." (Nicky Woolf)

"Christopher Hitchens first slouched into my consciousness as
the dishevelled raconteur who would appear on television news
programmes to chastise the baffled news anchor for their lopsided
analysis. He appeared to have tumbled directly out of a Tom Wolfe
novel but as soon as I got my hands on his writing it became clear
that Hitchens was more than just a "character". That he was a
brilliant rhetorician is beyond doubt, but as he displayed most
eloquently in his writing about his own cancer, he was also capable
of disarming candour. He met death with the same withering
gaze he reserved for his other opponents. In one of his many
glorious pieces of criticism, he wrote of Philip Larkin's "Aubade" that it is "a waking
meditation on extinction that unstrenuously contrives a tense,
brilliant counter-poise between the stoic philosophies of Lucretius
and David Hume, and his own frank terror of oblivion." Hitchens'
writing about mortality was weighted down with that same heavy
truth. I never met him personally, although I suspect I'd never
have got a word in edgeways if I had. Nor would I have wanted to."
(Kevin
Perry)

"The best description of Christopher Hitchens I've come across
was the one given by his friend Martin Amis. Hitchens, he said, was
a true egalitarian, in that he was exactly as happy being brutally
rude to the poor and powerless as he was to the rich and powerful.
How pleasant that made him in person I couldn't say, but in print
it made him fearless, in a rare and powerful way. This came coupled
with a razor-sharp ability at aphorisms. As a columnist you need to
ration your quoting of him or else it gets embarrassing.
Hitchens was one of the very few writers (the only others who
spring to mind are Winston Churchill and Douglas Adams; there must
be more) who have said something brilliant about almost
everything." (Hugo
Rifkind)

"In our trade, he was that rarest of things: a true
master-craftsman. I count myself incredibly privileged to have met
Christopher in my mid-twenties, for friendship with him was an
ongoing apprenticeship as well as a rich pleasure. Talking with
him, reading his prolific writings, appearing on the same edition
of Start The Week, I always realised - in the nicest sense
- how much I still had to learn. He was a heroic believer in, and
practitioner of, a journalism that was about more than bar charts,
bullet points and lazy ideology; a journalism punctilious in its
use of the English language, rich in literacy, and reinforced by a
vast hinterland of knowledge and culture. He was charmingly
formidable and formidably charming: a deadly opponent but a
munificent friend. His atheism was not bleak, a route-map to a
wasteland of lab coats and sharp-pencilled rationalism. It was a
joyous invitation to us all to set aside foolish superstitions and
the mind-forged manacles of religion, and to relish the miracle of
the here-and-now, the extraordinary opportunity of a life well and
fully lived. It is no accident that, as death approached, he
returned so often to Larkin's An Arundel Tomb and its last
line: "What will survive of us is love." That's true - and the best
possible epitaph to a wonderful man." (Matthew d'Ancona)

"Some of Hitchens' most joyous writing is on the black comedy
that is journalism - after reading his piece 'Fleet
Street's finest', Michael Frayn's Towards The End Of The
Morning became a favourite novel of mine. As the conditions
for journalism have become harder, Hitchens' affection for the
enterprise, with all of its bathos, booze and bleak gallows humour,
becomes even more precious. His dedication to his craft is
there on every single page of Hitch-22 and Arguably. As a poet and a journalist, I've given up
counting the number of times I've tried to reconcile the two paths
- Hitchens provides a better answer than I will ever muster.
Far from a dandyish sideline, doodling in the margins of reality,
Hitchens' attempts to use language as precisely as possible ensured
poetry is at life's core. He called the brilliant literary
criticism in Arguably, "Eclectic Affinities." I constantly
misread this as "Electric" Affinities - as a description for his
astonishing ability to short circuit the distance between writer
and reader, "electric" really is the right word. It's not
trivial either to celebrate his wit, deployed whatever the gravity
of the subject. To steal his phrase, he could "make a cat laugh."
He was an inspiration." (Olivia
Cole)

"The first-and last-time I saw Christopher Hitchens in person, it
was in Toronto, this time last year, for a debate with Tony Blair
on the merits of religion. In spite of being terribly ill, and
having to take a few short breaks to cough and mop his brow,
Hitchens not only wiped the floor with Blair intellectually, but he
also repeatedly made the room howl with laughter. I remember
breaking out in goosebumps, knowing that I was seeing a
once-in-a-generation talent in action. He was journalism's John
Lennon. He will be greatly missed." (Chris Ayres)

"The thing about Christopher is that he was way nicer, easier
and friendlier than his combative reputation suggested. The
friendship with Martin Amis, the coruscating journalism, the long trail of
discarded clever babes made me fearful of meeting him. The reality
was the warmest of men, entirely without side or arrogance and very
considerate and generous in his dealings. I went out drinking with
him several times in New York, and you reeled home happy in the
small hours. A charmer and a gentleman." (Nicholas Coleridge)